


Type II Error

by TundrainAfrica



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25377892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TundrainAfrica/pseuds/TundrainAfrica
Summary: Written for Spyfest Week 3. Set before Ark Angel. The updates on payroll accounts and budgets lined up too well with mysterious deaths and undisclosed missions. An auditor working for MI6 decides for herself whether or not the orders of her bosses Blunt and Jones were worth prying into.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	Type II Error

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Spyfest Everyone!
> 
> Spyfest Prompt: "Where some people see coincidence, I see conspiracy."
> 
> Set before Ark Angel because I have not yet read Nightshade.
> 
> Crossposted with ff.net but I decided to post on both places since I really am in the process of posting all my works in both platforms.

No one ever thought Alan Blunt could be an empathetic man.

That is until one day, Mrs. Jones had asked the Accounting Department to prepare a budget for a donation fund on an order from Blunt. To be specific, it was a fund that can help make education accessible to school kids in Egypt.

The rumor within MI6 only grew with that announcement. Some people said that Blunt was inspired by the success story of billionaire Herod Sayle and was moved to be a better man. When Herod Sayle was exposed as a fraud though with the Stormbreaker scandal, the funding not only continued, it was also getting bigger. The only ones allowed to touch the funds were Tulip Jones and Alan Blunt.

Cara Green, one of the auditors in the accounting department, found herself looking at the timeline of the usage of funds one lazy morning in the office. She had heard of the rumors about this fund during her orientation, along with the general consensus on Blunt's character.

Her workmates agreed that Blunt was not the type to embezzle funds. He wore the same drab suit everyday and had no hint of a family or a personal life worth embezzling funds for. He had no personal life, probably no source of love, sympathy or other generally human emotions. There was a general consensus as well that even if he would not embezzle the funds, he was not the type of person either to start a donation drive for underprivileged kids in Africa. The rumor mill only grew and over lunch the analysts and auditors were coming up with outrageous ideas for this funds. A forbidden relationship between Blunt and Jones? A hedge fund to appease rich clients? Or maybe it actually was a donation drive for underprivileged kids? The possibilities were endless.

Cara had worked in government offices before MI6 and she was aware of the dirty places money could go if people were not vigilant. As a new hire, she knew she would be unable to do anything even if she suspected corruption. Either way, it's better than being in the dark. A stupid excuse but enough for Cara to push on on her own private investigation of the documents of the company, fueled by the complete and utter boredom of having nothing else to do.

She had finished her work early last week and with nothing else to do, she looked through other changes and updates on accounts that transpired near the time of the establishment of the "Cairo Children of Hope" Fund.

There were updates in payroll accounts, payments of taxes, a few resignations here and there. There was one account closing which ended with funeral expenses. It was not an uncommon thing. She was working in a company that employs soldiers, of course they would have to cover funeral expenses every now and then.

She clicked on the payroll to see information of the owner. Ian Rider.

"Hey. You're bored already?"

Cara jumped as she heard the voice of her supervisor behind her.

She was lucky that Glenda Sevek was an easy going woman with an ear for gossip. Glenda worked hand in hand with human resources to organize payrolls and compensations for employees which put her in a good position to get the best news.

"Ian Rider." She read, her voice notably softer. "Why are you looking into his account? It closed months ago."

"Oh nothing, I was just reviewing how you document accounts updated here. I am just little curious about why some accounts had deductions for funeral expenses before closure."

"It's an occupational hazard in this business. I would say his was already pretty high profile in the department. They say he was killed investigating Herod Sayle."

"Oh wow." Cara recoiled at the news as she felt a wave of guilt run through her. She knew she'd be working in accounting payroll for secret agents but she was unsure about how much she was supposed to know about the missions. She was supposed to know compensation pays, bonuses of agents after missions but anything about what they actually did in a mission was confidential ideally. The news of billionaire Herod Sayle's mysterious death after the Stormbreaker scandal made international news though. The press never mentioned the details behind the death and Cara had assumed then that it was suicide out of shame and embarrassment.

With the death of said Ian Rider, Cara could not shake the feeling MI6 could have been involved. She estimated the death of Herod Sayle and knew agents were usually given a week to debrief before mission completion bonuses were released into their payroll account.

There were no mission completion bonuses released a week after Sayle's death, just the typical payroll. A large amount of money, enough to pay two to three agents for a year, though was debited from the recently opened Cairo Children of Hope fund account.

Coincidence maybe? Cara saw conspiracy.

She clicked on the fund and saw 6 updates on the funds appear on the screen, all within the last 3 months. The *see more* button was calling to her. She knew if she opened it then though, she would end up investigating the whole day.

She stretched her arms and decided that that was enough private investigation for a day and went back to answering emails from employees on the status of their accounts.

Before that though she made sure to check her Non Disclosure Agreement on file just in case.

**Type II Error**

She did enough work so no one could have said she was slacking then spent her last hour of work prying through updates on payroll accounts. There were a fair amount of withdrawals within the past three months. She looked at the updated accounts in the weeks of these withdrawals that went all the way up to 4 times the average salary of an agent. Payrolls, completion bonuses and injury compensations were given to agents as ordered. Maybe for missions that were related?

Cara had access to the profiles of the agents and and the code names assigned to missions. Pointblank, Skeleton. Oddly enough, she picked up on the first one through a quick google search.

Searching entries for pointblank a week into the payroll of the employee brought out information on the shutting down of Academy Pointblanc due to the Mysterious Death of the headmaster Grief in a plane crash. Skeleton did not give a quick easy solution even with the time filter. As soon as she searched with they key word mysterious death though, she came up with the mysterious death of Alexei Sarov. There was no obvious link to an Skeleton though except for this island in Cuba he owned that was called Cayo Esqueleto.

It was too small of a detail though that it could have easily been a coincidence.

The next withdrawal matched well with the mysterious disappearance of Damien Cray, a pop singer, billionaire and philanthropist that even she mourned the loss of. There was no payroll near this date which could have connected that mysterious death to an MI6 mission. That was the last withdrawal she was able to trace.

Were three massive withdrawals (out of six withdrawals) that happened near mysterious deaths of mid profile people enough to implicate MI6 and the education fund to mysterious deaths? Two of the funds were succeeded by a release of mission completion bonuses for agents that could only easily be explained by MI6 lending power to investigations on these deaths. Damian Cray's mysterious death did not even precede a payroll payment although it did precede a withdrawal from the fund.

There were many account updates happening during those times, there were many other missions closing and compensations made that Cara ended up scolding herself and her wild imagination for spending the past few hours creating this wild scenario where MI6 was paying someone, not in the payroll, to send mid profile doctors and retired generals to mysterious deaths. Cara had studied enough data. She had studied enough math and statistics to imbibe the always useful lesson that the null hypothesis should not be rejected without sufficient evidence. The Africa children fund is a fund established with the public's best interest unless proven corrupt. Also, there was an easier explanation for the amounts withdrawn from these funds. It was not uncommon for large organizations to funnel funds to benefactors every other week.

She could hear the rustle of bags and papers and was familiar enough with that pattern to know that people were ready to leave. She looked at that time and realized it was almost 5pm. She logged in her hours, logged off the computer and started packing her belongings.

**Type II Error**

The next day, Cara found herself busy organizing the monthly payrolls of all MI6 employees. If she had been a little freer that day, she probably would have noticed the monthly withdrawal from the CCH fund. Cara though, respected the office ethic enough and her service level agreement to know that she had to make sure the payrolls were ready to be sent out by the end of the week along with mission bonuses. With the amount of payrolls she was auditing, the mission completion bonuses to SAS agents that were so coincidentally given out right after the withdrawal easily fell into the cracks between the piles of work Cara had to finish by the end of the week.

If Cara hadn't had her earphones on that day and if she hadn't been glued to her phone as she made her way to the nearest subway from the Royal General Bank she probably would have heard the distant sound of a gunshot or the sound of a screaming woman. She probably would have noticed crowds making their way to the wider street that passed through the main entrance of the bank. By the time Cara had arrived home, the evening news had moved on to more pressing matters than the mysterious shooting of a 14 year old child in front of the Royal General Bank.

At 8am the next morning, if Cara had not decided to go straight to work to complete the audits by the end of the week, she would have noticed a weirdly timed withdrawal from the CCH fund, a day after the last.

By then though, she had decided for herself already, the relationship and timings that connected withdrawals and mysterious deaths were too much of a long shot to even be worth prying.

The null hypothesis was not worth prying. Maybe it was better to just give her bosses the benefit of the doubt. She had more important things to deal with.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope to get your feedback on this. I haven't reread the books in a while but I am hoping at least I captured canon all the way until Ark Angel correctly.


End file.
